It was at Frankfurt/Mainin 1899 that Paul Ehrlich first expounded his famous "site-chain theory" -which described the basic immunological principal of antibody-antigen interactio- on the occasion of the opening of the Institute for Experimental Therapeutics (which was later named after him). Nearly 100 years have passed since, and in retrospect it can be said that the "Ehrlich Era" (first steps in immunology "Magic Bullet" concept) and the "Behring Era" (detection of antibodies and serum therapy) formed the essential basis in the development of immunology. Niels K. Jerne, the former director...

In the past nuclear medicine has tended to develop in cycles governed by the development of new radiopharmaceuticals followed or preceded by advances in instrumentation. The development of alternative techniques, such as X-Ray Computer Tomography, NMR Imaging and Ultrasound have also had a stimulating effect and pointed the way to new developments. The development of Positron Emission Tomography, while in itself of limited application because of high costs involved, provided a great deal of information which led to the development of new organ or disease specific, single photon emitting...

Can drug development and evaluation be improved by the use of positron emission tomography (PET)? PET is now well established and many PET centres participate in networks that warrant the quality of their research. PET allows one to follow the effect of a drug on a variety of patients' metabolic parameters. In addition, PET may be used to follow the fate in vivo of a compound, allowing visualisation of its binding to specific receptors and a direct study of the mechanism of drug action in normal and pathological situations.
The book shows the fields in which PET offers new and unique...

Parameters such as membrane transport, metabolism and protein incorporation govern the fate of amino acids in living tissue. Is it possible to use positron tomography to measure some of them, and what is their meaning in normal and pathological situations? These questions have been addressed for a long time and no satisfactory answer has yet been given.
This book, which derives from an EEC workshop organized in the frame of the Concerted Action on PET Investigation of Cellular Regeneration and Degeneration', held in Lyon in February 1992, gives the present state of knowledge in this...

Imaging of the Dopaminergic system in the human brain with the in vivo use of Positron Emis sion Tomography has emerged in the late 1980s as a tool of major importance in Clinical Neuros ciences and Pharmacology. The last few years have witnessed the rapid development of new radiotracers specific to receptors, reuptake sites and enzymes of the dopamine system; the application of these radiotracers has led to major breakthroughs in the pathophysiology and therapy of movement disorders and schizophrenic-like psychoses. This book is the first to collect, in a single volume, state-of-the-art...

Despite 50 years of antibiotics, infection remains a major source of both morbidity and mortality. Immunosuppression, either secondary to drugs in transplant recipients or secondary to HIV, has expanded the number of microorganisms that are known to be pathogenic in man.
Imaging of infection has a vital role both in the initial diagnosis and in the continuing management of patients with infection or suspected infection. Functional imaging using nuclear medicine techniques has a unique role to play in identifying sites of infection in a wide range of patients with varying clinical...

In the developed world, images of brain structure are available as an everyday diagnostic aid, and the characteristic appearances of most pathological conditions can be looked up in a textbook. Functional brain imaging is to this day less widely used, partly because most pressing diagnostic questions can be answered by refer ence to the patient's cerebral anatomy, partly for reasons of technical limitations of functional techniques. PET as a technique is sufficiently resource-demanding and complex to inhibit its use as an everyday diagnostic technique. SPECT lacked suitable tracers for many...

Conventional nuelear medieine proeedures study the dis- tribution of radiolabelled eompounds (radiopharmaeeutieals) in the body under physiologieal as well as under pathologieal eonditions. Beeause of their ability to visua- lise and to quantify the distribution of radiopharmaeeuti- eals within the body by means of external deteetors, nuelear medieine teehniques are basieally non invasive and funetion oriented. The spatial variation of the traeer distribution in the field of view, or the ehange in distribution during a time interval are interpreted as representing speeifie phy- siologie or...

G. F. FUEGER Among the many processes in Physiology few appear mo~e inviting to be studied by tracers and external imaging than the variety of the routes of migratory (blood) cells in health and disease. Much emphasis has been placed lately on the methods of labelling of the white blood cells. It is obviously quite important and necessary to refine the methods of leucocytic labelling, particularly to search for ways to label selectively a specific group of white blood cells, but there is also the need to review and keep abreast with the developing knowledge of the white blood cells...

Just prior to the 1982 Annual Meeting of the European Thyroid Association in Brussels, a number of outstanding experts in the field of X-ray fluorescence gathered at the Academisch Ziekenhuis of the Free University of Brussels in a joint effort to more clearly define the actual place and value of the latest newcomer among the techniques available for the in vivo assessment of thyroid function. It is the merit of Prof. M. Jonckheer to have organised this meeting and to have made available the work presented there to a larger public in the form of this monograph. Both, the meeting and the...